Broadcasting Santa Ana

In this day and age, there is no technological excuse for not making it simple and easy for citizens to watch their city councils in action. The only excuses can be political ones advanced by city staff and councilmembers themselves.

As the bloggers at Orange Juice have repeatedly pointed out, the Santa Ana City Council has been retrograde in this area. Not only have they not begun broadcasting and archiving city council meetings on the city website, they don't even televise every council meeting. Given some of the hair-brained expenditures that have been approved by the City Council, financial considerations cannot be considered a serious impediment.

So kudos to Councilwoman Michele Martinez for agendizing an item today asking her council colleagues to make their deliberations as widely available as current technology permits:

Direct the City Attorney to prepare an ordinance amending Santa Ana Municipal Code Section 2-100 by requiring that all city council meetings be videotaped and televised on a public access channel, be made available as streaming online footage on the city's website, and be made available in an online searchable archive on the City's website for at least five years.

The reasons for approving Councilwoman Martinez's request are manifest:

1) It advances the public good by making city government more transparent.

2) Many voters are able to take an evening off to attend a council meeting. Enacting Martinez's item gives voters the opportunity to watch their council in action according to their own schedules, rather than having to arrange their lives around the council's schedule.

3) Council meetings don't effectively vanish into the ether once they're over, and archiving them online provides a more complete and nuanced record than terse council minutes.

4) Martinez's measure is an antidote to rumor and misinformation. Rather than rely on thrid-party characterizations (and mischaracterizations), interested voters can see for themselves hat their councilmembers did or didn't say and do.

There is no compelling reason for Santa Ana Councilmembers to vote against Michele Martinez's proposed ordinance. Any councilmember who does really will be voting against making Santa Ana government more open to Santa Ana residents -- something that city's voters should keep in mind during the next couple of election cycles.

Comments

[Not a Carlos fan]

No one on the council even issued a second to Michele's motion. I hope the GOP does NOT endorse Carlos Bustamante for re-election after failing to prove to voters that he's worth anything... especially an earlier vote that evening to remove respected Commissioner Thomas Gordon (a fellow republican to boot) from the EPIC Commission.